Recrutements et appels à communications

Le GrUE (Groupe de recherche sur l'UE) vous invite à soumettre vos propositions de communications pour deux journées d'étude interdisciplinaires sur les matérialités de l'intégration européenne.

Ces journées visent à faire dialoguer des travaux issus de disciplines et d’approches variées sur les dimensions matérielles de l’intégration européenne et de l’européanisation. Là où les études européennes s’intéressent le plus souvent aux séquences de construction d’institutions, de référentiels ou de réseaux intellectuels et professionnels, elles tendent à laisser dans l’ombre d’autres manifestations plus « physiques » de l’intégration européenne. Or les standards techniques, les réseaux d’infrastructures de béton et d’acier, la circulation des flux de personnes, de biens et de valeurs monétaires ou financières structurent des Europes qui ne recoupent pas toutes l’Union européenne (UE). Quelques questions centrales parmi celles qui guideront nos débats : comment saisir cette matérialité des intégrations européennes ? Avec quels outils et concepts ? Qu'est-ce que l'UE fait matériellement au continent, comment contribue-t-elle à harmoniser notre expérience quotidienne par ses règlements et ses investissements ? Et quelles autres "Europes" alternatives à l'UE sont produites par les coopérations techniques ou le développement d'infrastructures sociotechniques ? 

L'appel à communication complet est disponible sur notre carnet hypothèses, en français et en anglais. Les propositions de communications (500 mots) sont attendues pour le 19 décembre 2025, à l'adresse eumats@proton.me .

Ces deux journées se dérouleront à Liège les 22 et 23 juin 2026, avec le soutien de l'Université de Liège et de l'Université Sorbonne Paris Nord. 

N'hésitez pas à nous contacter si vous avez des questions. Et à faire circuler cet appel à communications dans vos réseaux, particulièrement hors science politique.

L'équipe organisatrice pour le GrUE : Julien Bois (ULiège), Laurène Le Cozanet (Institut universitaire européen), Camille Rivière (ENGIE-Crigen) et Antonin Thyrard (USPN).

On 23 June 2026, it will be ten years since British voters chose to leave the European Union by a short majority of 52%. This historic decision reshaped the UK’s political landscape and economic situation. After years of tense negotiations, the Withdrawal Agreement was signed in December 2019, followed by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement in 2020. But far from being over, the vote’s legacy of turmoil and significant disruption continues to reverberate across British politics and society.

This conference seeks to revisit the meaning and legacy of Brexit a decade after the referendum by focusing specifically on Eurosceptic and Europhile movements, parties, and narratives in the UK. We aim to analyse how these political currents have evolved, how they shaped the referendum and its aftermath, and how they continue to influence British politics in a post-Brexit context.

Euroscepticism has been a central category in the study of British and European politics for decades. The influential distinction between hard and soft Euroscepticism (Szczerbiak and Taggart, 2002) provided a foundation for understanding party positioning, later refined by typologies such as Flood and Usherwood’s (2005) model of group alignment. Scholars have also connected Euroscepticism to broader ideological and societal cleavages (Hooghe et al., 2002; Hooghe and Marks, 2009) and to populist and nationalist narratives (Gifford, 2020; Tournier-Sol, 2021).

At the same time, attention has turned to the cultural, emotional, and discursive dimensions of Euroscepticism, with growing work on narratives of blame, identity, and ‘othering’ (Brusenbauch Meislová, 2019; 2024). This literature highlights how Euroscepticism is not only a matter of policy disagreement but also a question of political identity and symbolic politics.

By contrast, Europhilia has received less systematic attention, even though pro-European movements, parties, and discourses (from the Liberal Democrats to grassroots campaigns such as Best for Britain) have played a vital role in contesting Brexit and articulating visions of continued engagement with Europe. Exploring both eurosceptic and europhile traditions side by side offers an opportunity to rethink the conceptual tools we use to study the UK’s relationship with Europe.

Immediately after the referendum, there were questions about a possible domino effect elsewhere in the EU, which have so far failed to materialise. In contrast, some mainstream politicians expressed stronger rhetorical attachment to the EU in the face of populist contestation of European integration. The evolution of eurosceptic and europhile traditions could also be explored in a comparative perspective.

The conference will welcome papers addressing, but not limited to, the following topics:

•    Party-based euroscepticism and europhilia in Britain (political parties)
•    Public opinion, civic mobilisation, grassroots movements and the politics of identity around Europe since 2016
•    UK European decision-making and foreign policy after Brexit
•    The transformation of the UK party system in the wake of Brexit
•    Narratives of Britain, Europe, and the EU in political discourse, media, and culture
•    Comparative perspectives on euroscepticism and europhilia in the broader EU context

Please send an abstract and a short biography by 15 January 2026 to thibaud.harrois@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr, emmanuelle.avril@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr, pauline.schnapper@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr and clemence.leveque@univ-tln.fr

Politique européenne invites proposals for special issues to be published in 2027. Proposals on any subject within the scope of the journal are welcome and should be sent to the editorial committee (revue.politique.europeenne@gmail.com) before 1 March 2025.

Individual article submissions are also welcome and will be reviewed on an ongoing basis.

All proposals for a special issue must take the form of a document of no more than five pages and include the following elements: 

• A general presentation of the issue, the question addressed and, where applicable, the theoretical and methodological approach,
• An explanation of how the special issue fits into and complements the state of the art and, therefore, the main theoretical and empirical contributions that the issue intends to make,
• And a summary of no more than five to seven articles (author, title, and abstract for each proposed article).

Anyone interested in submitting a proposal is kindly requested to consult the general guidelines on the journal’s website (https://politique-europeenne.cairn.info/comment-soumettre/) and to ensure that their proposal contains all the required information. The journal’s editorial board plans to make a decision shortly thereafter and will inform all those who have submitted a proposal of the outcome at that time.

The editorial board also encourages submissions of original scientific articles related to European integration studies, covering the journal’s areas of focus: public policy analysis, political anthropology, law, political economy, history of European integration, comparative politics, international relations, political sociology, and political theory.

Further information on the requirements for a special issue or a Varia article is available on the dedicated page of the journal’s website.

Please do not hesitate to contact us at revue.politique.europeenne@gmail.com if you have any questions about the procedure or any informal requests.